


String Theory

by comealongpixie



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, F/M, Mentions of past sexual assault, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Present Tense, mentions of past medical abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comealongpixie/pseuds/comealongpixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homicide detective Caroline Abruzzo’s comfort zone is her work, her dog, and her caffeine addiction. That comfort zone is quickly shattered when her partner decides to start working with a tiny M.E. with pale skin and a penchant for knowing the unknowable about murder victims. As Caroline’s social circle begins to shift, so do her feelings for M.E. #2-but opening up to people has never worked out well for her in the past.</p><p>Which will win out? Her fear? Her affection? Or the left-field contender, the third-party candidate: a secret zombie epidemic? Only time will tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nothing Else I Can Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline yells at Ravi about Lady Gaga. Ravi is confused.

 

  _“From the beginning, I was wishing that our first impressions wouldn’t last.”_

-Brie Larson

**10:22 AM.**

“You’re never gonna believe what the ME told me.”

 

Despite looking intensely focused, Caroline instantly breaks her concentration on the screen in front of her and swivels her chair to face her partner, looking up at him with a raised brow. Anyone who doesn’t know her would take it as a sign of disinterest and annoyance.

 

Clive Babineaux is one of the few people that _does_ know her, and so he continues.

 

“So I go down there,” he says, pulling out the chair in front of his own desk. “And I ask if they have an ID on the Jane Doe we been working.” He sits down. “Now, Doc says he’s got nothing, but then his resident-this tiny albino looking girl-starts spouting all this stuff about Jane being arrested in Vancouver in 2008.”

 

Both of Caroline’s eyebrows raise instinctively at the mention of her hometown, but she shakes it off and nods. _Keep going._ Mindlessly, she picks up her legs to rest her ankles on the edge of Clive’s desk. Their sargeant hates her doing this, but he isn’t around just then.

 

Clive had hated it too, at first. He still didn’t like it-even now, he shot an annoyed glance at her boots-but he’s long since accepted that there’s no stopping her.

 

“I ask her how she knows it, she goes ‘Oh, it was just a hunch.’”

 

Caroline scoffs at this.

 

“Yeah, right? But they look it up, lo and behold: our girl’s name was Stefani Germanotta. Picture of her in the report, fingerprints match, it all lines up.”

 

“Okay. Weird, but not unbelievable.” The thing Caroline likes about Clive is that he never asks for more than she can give him. Caroline can hold a normal conversation if she has to, but forcing herself to communicate primarily via words when her brain isn’t in the mood is like trying to force an old clock to run. Stubborn wheels and gears that she has to constantly reset, only for it to burn out again minutes later. Rinse and repeat.

 

Not only does Clive know how to read between the lines so she doesn’t have to do that, he also doesn’t do that annoying thing where he makes a big deal when she _does_ talk. Because nothing makes her want to be more social like people cooing over her like a toddler when she does.

 

“I’m getting to that,” Clive says. “So I ask her how she knew that-I say, tell me the truth-and you know what she says?”

 

Caroline raises a brow.

 

“She says she’s _psychic._ ”

 

Caroline snorts. “She said that?”

 

“Well, actually Chakrabarti said it, and then she said ‘ish.’ She’s ‘psychic-ish.’”

 

“‘Psychic-ish.’” Caroline scoffs, shaking her head. “What does that even mean?”

 

“I don’t know,” Clive says, standing up. “But her information checks out. I’m gonna go tell Suzuki.”

 

Caroline nods. “Let me know where it takes us,” she calls after him.

 

He waves a hand in response.

 

* * *

 

 

**12:16 PM.**

 

Here is a math problem:

Q. Caroline hates the coffee at the station. However, she also cannot function without a blood-caffeine concentration of .11. If Starbuck’s Blonde Roast is 16 fl oz and contains 360mg of caffeine, and Caroline is 5’9” and 160 lbs, how often does Caroline need to leave the station to buy coffee in order to keep her BCC at .11 or higher?

A. Enough times that she can’t really be angry when she misses everything, and has no idea why, when she walks back in, her fellow officers are singing Lady Gaga loudly.

 

She shoots them an annoyed glance and heads to her desk. Clive is sitting at his, rubbing a hand down his face. He’s clearly already having a shitty day, so she keeps her ankles off his desk this time, handing him his coffee instead. He takes it without speaking or even looking at her.

 

“I feel like I missed something,” she says.

 

Clive is staring intently at his computer screen, and she thinks maybe he’s just staring intently at the nearest stare-able spot that isn’t her.

 

“You know Stefani Germanotta?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“It’s Lady Gaga’s real name.”

 

She takes a moment to process this.

 

“So Lady Gaga isn’t her real name?”

 

Clive glares at her. She smirks a tiny bit, the left corner of her mouth turning up almost imperceptibly.

 

“It’s not funny.”

 

Caroline holds up her hands in surrender. “It’s not funny,” she agrees, and smirks more.

 

He glares more, then shakes his head and stands up. “Et tu, Abruzzo?”

 

She shrugs.

 

“Right in the back.” He makes a stabbing motion before walking away. “Right in the back.”

 

* * *

 

 

**11:11 PM.**

_(Approx. ten hours after the Lady Gaga Incident stopped being funny.)_

 

Caroline stomps into the ME’s office. This is not easy to achieve; the floors are very solid, and her boots are not particularly heavy, but she is strong, and motivated.

 

Dr. Chakrabarti is still there, luckily. Unluckily, there seems to be no one else around, tiny and pale or otherwise. The man himself isn’t in the morgue proper, but she can see him in the lab through the glass window, doing science or whatever. This is also unlucky, because it is probably the reason that he had apparently not heard her stomping.

 

She kicks the wall pointedly. “Hey!”

 

The good doctor looks up abruptly and sets down whatever he had been working on. He steps back into the morgue.

 

“Detective Abruzzo, what can I do for you?”

 

Caroline knows the senior ME in the same way she knows the guy at Starbucks whose shift aligns with her morning break. All-business. She tries to be polite-usually, anyway-but she’s not really interested in bonding. Just interested in not having her coffee spit in. Or her evidence spit in, metaphorically speaking.

 

Caroline doesn’t answer his question.

 

“So where’s you little ‘ _psychic_ ’ friend?” Caroline demands, descending the stairs into the morgue. She isn’t literally doing air quotes around the word “psychic,” but she’s doing them with her voice.

 

It seems to take Ravi a second to register this; he squints at her in confusion for a split second before lighting up in realization. “Oh! Liv. The psychic. Yes. I, ah, sent her home early.” Pause. “Why? What did she do?” His conversational tone has been switched out for a lower one, suspicious and worried.

 

“She identified our Jane Doe as a beloved American cultural icon.”

 

“...I’m sorry?”

 

“Stefani Germanotta is _Lady Gaga’s real name_.”

 

“O-oh. Well, that’s a wrench in the works, then.”

 

“It is. It really is, especially since I can’t concentrate now because every detective in the Goddamn precinct can’t stop serenading my partner with really shitty acapella versions of ‘Untouched.’”

 

“Well, that sounds more like an intradepartmental-wait, why would they be singing Untouched?”

 

“Cause...Lady Gaga.”

 

“That’s not a Lady Gaga song. I’m not even sure it’s a song-wait, no, I remember that one now. The Veronicas. I haven’t heard from them in awhile, I wonder what happened to them?”

 

“Wait. Okay, so what’s the song that’s like…’rah rah...ah ah ah?’”

 

(It should be pointed out that Ravi is, at this moment, and against his better judgment, severely tempted to pretend not to recognize the song and try to get her to sing it instead of saying the words. His better judgment wins out, however.)

 

“Bad Romance. The song is Bad Romance, how do you not know this?”

 

“Oh My God! Not the point!”

 

Ravi holds up his hands in surrender.

 

“All I’m saying is that I hold you, personally, responsible for this. So if I have to hear that Goddamn Lady Gaga song one more time, you and I are gonna have a problem.”

 

“...I’m sorry, was I just threatened by an officer of the law? Like, just so we’re clear on what just happened...?” The doctor doesn’t sound angry, but he doesn’t sound scared, either. Just sort of genuinely stunned.

 

Caroline doesn’t really have an answer for that, so she goes with the simple, but classic, “Bite me.” Then she turns and walked away. She doesn’t put as much energy into stomping this time; her work here is done, whatever that work had been, and she mostly just wants to go home, get into bed, and hope to God she doesn’t dream about Lady _fucking_ Gaga.


	2. The Blame Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline meets Liv and they have a fun time making Johnny Frost very uncomfortable.

_"Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?"_

-Jack's Mannequin

No such luck on the Lady Gaga front. The setting of Caroline’s dream that night manifested as a loud, crowded concert. Which was not so terrible, relatively speaking, unless you happened to be an autistic, antisocial recluse who sometimes got anxious at particularly crowded crime scenes, in which case a dream about a crowded concert hall could constitute a nightmare.

 

The result of this: The next day, Caroline wakes up in an even more sour mood than usual. (This is exacerbated by the fact that her co-workers, apparently, have not yet grown bored of teasing her partner via shitty acapella pop songs.)

 

And the result of that: She spends most of the morning sulking as she fills out reports, and treats herself to an extra, but desperately needed, coffee break.

 

And upon returning from said coffee break, she finds a petite blonde sitting in front of Clive’s empty desk, tucking a stapler into her purse.

 

Caroline sets her coffee on her own desk, and then leans against it. “Are you trying to steal that stapler?”

 

The other girl jumps slightly-apparently she hadn’t heard Caroline approach-and looks up at her. “No,” she says, setting it back on the desk uneasily. “I was just looking at it.”

 

Caroline arches a brow, studying her. She considers pressing the issue, but honestly, attempted theft of office supplies is below her pay grade, and she doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. Besides which, it only takes a moment of observation for Caroline to connect the smaller woman’s pale skin and hair with Clive’s description from the previous day.

 

“You’re the psychic.” It’s not a question.

 

“...Um.” Caroline’s accusatory tone seems to have caught the woman off guard, but before she can respond, Clive is settling back into his chair, looking supremely annoyed.

 

“Miss Cleo,” he greets the woman across from him. “I see you’ve met my partner.”

 

“Yes,” she replies, sounding impatient.

 

“I just got here,” Caroline clarifies, although she’s not sure why.

 

“Well, let’s catch up. Miss Moore, this is Detective Caroline Abruzzo. Abruzzo, Olivia Moore. The junior M.E.”

 

“I figured,” Caroline replies, at the same time the M.E. in question chimes in with “It’s Liv.”

 

Clive doesn’t respond to either comment, but he turns his attention fully to the woman in front of him. “So tell me: is my day going to get worse?”

 

Liv seems to bristle at this; Caroline gets the sense that she’s feeling ganged up on. The sound of more Lady Gaga-based harassment is grating, but not unexpected; Liv, however, turns around to find the source, before turning back to the detectives, looking amused.  

 

“I think those guys want your bad romance,” she tells Clive. “Unless singing Lady Gaga around the precinct is a cop thing.”

 

“Only after one of their peers proudly reports Stefani Germanotta as the name of the murder victim,” Clive replies. “That name you gave me? It’s Lady Gaga’s real name.”

 

“Wait, so Lady Gaga isn’t her real name?”

 

This comment almost endears Liv to Caroline, just a little, but she fights back the sentiment out of loyalty to Clive and out of resentment over her workplace being filled with more nonsense than usual.

 

Clive narrows his eyes.

 

Liv clears her throat. “The Jane Doe must have given that name to the police when she was arrested,” she suggests. “It’s still the girl.”

 

Clive doesn’t answer. Instead, he goes into a monologue about the trouble he’s had building his reputation in homicide. Caroline zones out about five words into it, because she’s heard it before. It’s a valid concern for him to have. It’s also super boring to hear about.

 

She tunes back in when Liv finally jumps in. “I saw something,” she says.

 

“Saw with your eyes, or saw with your ‘gift’?”

 

Liv ignores this. “I saw who killed Stef-who killed our Jane Doe.”

 

“That’s great. Do tell.” Clive reaches for a pen and clicks it. “What’s his name? I’ll go pick him up, maybe grab some lunch.” He must be super pissed, because he’s always sarcastic, but he’s usually less aggressive about it.

 

Liv hesitates for a long moment. Finally: “Johnny Frost.”

 

Clive stares at her. Caroline glances between them, and searches her mind for a face to put to the name. She knows she’s heard it before, but it sounds like a cartoon character. She slips into her head for only a moment, and then Clive is nudging her.

 

“You coming, Abruzzo?”

 

“Yeah.” Caroline doesn’t hesitate. She has no idea where she’s following him to, but she trusts him, generally. She glances at Liv, who seems stunned and put out at all once.

 

“Great.” Clive heads for the front door to the precinct. Caroline follows him, pocketing her hands. Liv doesn’t, and although he doesn’t turn around, he seems to sense the doctor’s hesitation, because he snaps “Zelda Rubenstein, pick up the pace!” before going outside.

 

Caroline bumps shoulders with him lightly to get his attention. “Johnny Frost?” she asks in a stage whisper.

 

“Weatherman from channel 11,” he mutters back. “Do you own a TV?”

 

“I don’t know what that is,” she replies flatly. “It sounds like witchcraft.”

 

“Mhm.” Clive leans against the driver’s side of the squad car, glancing at the door to the precinct. Liv is making her way to them, if reluctantly. “How much did you miss in there while you were trying to figure it out?”

 

“I put the pieces together,” she assures him.

 

“Great.”

 

* * *

 

 

Caroline’s had the same spinner ring since she first moved to Seattle. It’s etched with moon and star shapes, and it’s dull from frequent use; she wears it every day.

 

Now, in the channel 11 news studio, she’s spinning it nonstop, holding it between her thumb and forefinger in the pocket of her jacket so as to not be obvious about it. She does it without thinking. As a kid, she used to flap her hands, but this behavior was quickly trained out of her.

 

She can’t focus without doing something with her hands, though; she doesn’t know how anyone else can. So the ring is a good compromise. It allows her to do her job, which currently consists of watching some rando predict the weather, while also not distracting other people by being too noticeable with her hands.

 

Caroline’s not sure why hand-flapping-a largely innocuous gesture-is taken as a personal offense by other people, but telling people obvious shit that they already know (spoiler alert: it’s going to rain, because they live in the Pacific Northwest, and it never fucking stops raining) is considered admirable. But she doesn’t make the rules. And she likes her ring better at this point, anyways.

 

A bell rings. Someone yells “cut,” and then someone else yells “That’s great, Johnny, that’s great,” and then Liv turns to them and says “Yep, that is definitely the guy from my vision. Can I go now?”

 

“Oh, hell, no,” Clive replies. “We’re about to know if you’re the real deal or a one-trick pony.”

 

Quite frankly, Caroline wouldn’t mind if Liv left. She’s used to working with Clive alone, and having Liv along is throwing her slightly off-kilter. Not enough to make her lose focus-just a small, but persistent annoyance. Like an itch she can’t scratch, only in the back of her brain. Plus, she still blames the smaller girl for the Lady Gaga debacle, and hasn’t forgiven her for it yet.

 

But Clive seems to have a personal stake in the question of Liv’s legitimacy as a psychic, so Caroline keeps quiet.

 

“Oh, what? You’re gonna say ‘my psychic friend here says you’re a murderer! Sign this confession!’”

 

Caroline smiles a little at this, and turns away to hide it, transferring her attention to Johnny Frost, who is being fussed over by a brunette in a blue shirt. The woman is unclipping his microphone, and then cleaning makeup off his face, and then the man begins to walk away, winking in what is either her or Liv’s direction, she’s not sure. Or then again, maybe the wink is directed at Clive. Or any combination of the three. She doesn’t know his life. Except that he’s possibly a murderer, but that’s still up in the air.

 

Clive stops him before he can get too far. “Excuse me, Mr. Frost,” he says, holding out a photo of their Jane Doe.

 

Johnny Frost must not look too closely, because he pulls out a pen. “Of course! Who do I make it out to?”

 

“Seattle police department,” Clive replies, flashing his badge.

 

The weatherman frowns in confusion, and looks down at the photo, and his eyes widen in fear. Not so up in the air, then.

 

Caroline glances at Liv, who’s smirking a little.

 

“I take it you know her?” Clive asks.

 

“I don’t. Any more questions, you can ask with my lawyer present.”

 

Caroline’s never seen someone lawyer up that fast before.

 

Frost starts to walk away, shooting a comment in Liv’s direction about needing some sun, but Liv stops him.

 

“ _Heeeere’s Johnny_ ,” she says.

 

Caroline has the vague sense she gets when she knows she’s hearing a pop culture reference, somehow, but has no idea what it’s from or what it’s about. A result of watching a lot of allusion-happy cartoons as a kid that she doesn’t consciously remember in detail. She doesn’t know why Liv says it, but it gets a reaction.

 

Frost turns around and comes back over, almost whispering. “Did she record our sessions?” he demands, but Caroline doesn’t have time to wonder about the comment, because he doesn’t wait for an answer before putting on a charming smile and saying “Look, I’m a beloved public figure, isn’t there something we could do to just make this go away?”

 

Caroline scoffs. “Sorry. When it comes to murder, we don’t generally take pinky-promises as a guarantee against second offences.”

 

Frost’s face falls. “Murder? Wait, Tatiana’s dead?”

 

Huh.

 

“Can you account for your whereabouts Monday evening?” Clive replies.

 

“I was here! On live TV at six and eleven, doing the weather. I have 100,000 eye witnesses.”

 

The number he gives doesn’t sound right to her, but she decides not to question it.

 

“We’re gonna need you to tell us everything you know about Tatiana,” she says instead.

 

* * *

 

 

Frost’s office is full of paperwork and framed pictures and a corkboard with fan letters pinned onto it. His desk is covered in pointless skymall-esque conversation pieces-a tiny magnetic globe, a newton’s cradle, and a couple things that she doesn’t recognize, but she’s sure serve a similar nonexistent purpose. She tucks her hands back into her pockets to keep herself from touching them.

 

Frost pulls up a webpage on his computer. Caroline recognizes their Jane Doe first-Tatiana, she corrects herself internally-and then recognizes the site itself as an escort website.

 

“See? Roleplaying,” Frost says. “The trophy wife and the intruder was one of our go-tos.”

 

“That’s really weird,” Caroline comments.

 

Frost looks mildly offended, and Clive shoots her a warning look. _Don’t antagonize him. We need him to cooperate._

 

Caroline rolls her eyes. “My bad,” she says, holding her hands palms up. “No judgies.”

 

Frost shakes his head and turns back to the screen. “How do you even know about this? Did you talk to Tess?”

 

“Who’s Tess?” Clive asks.

 

“Her friend.” Frost clicks a link on the site, and a picture of Tatiana with another girl pops up. The girl looks older than Tatiana, with big brown eyes and curly brown hair, but they share the same “come hither” stare. Caroline wonders if the bedroom eyes come naturally to them, or if there are some cast-off photos somewhere of the two women trying and failing to look inviting.

 

The thought brings up the memory of her first and only attempt at sexting from college, and she wrinkles her nose slightly. Disastrous. It’s good that she decided to go into law enforcement, because she would never have made it as a sex worker.

 

“Have they worked together a lot?” Clive asks.

 

“I don’t know; I only doubled the fun once on my birthday.”

 

“I mean, Tatiana has Tess listed on her own website,” Caroline points out. “If I were a prostitute, I wouldn’t do that unless I felt comfortable working with her.”

 

Clive shoots her a look that’s somewhere between surprised and annoyed. Frost seems to find the words “if I were a prostitute” evocative, though, because he glances her over in a way that makes her pull her jacket more tightly around herself, lifting her upper lip in a silent imitation of a growl.

 

Clive steps between them, pointedly blocking Frost’s view of his partner, and Caroline relaxes. She’s not afraid of Johnny Frost-she’s the one holding the gun, after all- and the look was fairly innocuous anyway, but she likes knowing Clive has her back. “You have an address for her?”

 

“It’s not like I sent her a Christmas card,” Frost says impatiently.

 

“Call me if you think of anything else,” Clive replies, handing the weatherman a card.

 

Caroline takes this as her cue to leave and opens the door. She ignores the cramp in her finger, even as she realizes that she’s been spinning her ring nonstop the entire time.

**Author's Note:**

> it's really important to me that you guys understand that caroline does not reflect my personal views on lady gaga, we have very different opinions. like have you heard cheek to cheek cause i have and im in love.
> 
> anyways i don't really have much to say about this one except that i hope you like it and if you have a second i'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
